Sentence completion is sometimes my nightmare.

Trade and commerce are synonyms.

The only correct answer is E, seriously. The Silk Road (not a literal road) connected once separate and far flung cultures with one another, and not only was there a trade of goods and services, but also the spread of information, ideas, inventions, and culture in ways that have been a great benefit to the entire world as we now know it. It reshaped our world view.

is this a content question or grammar question? If it is about the content, then there is problably a context for it, but in general terms, these make sense: b, d and e. B and D are written in a weird way, but you can make some sense of it. b: yes, the iron tech allowed for more powerful warfare equipment, and it also generated iron and iron equip. commerce around the world. People would trade it and use it for war. d: sortage and abundance of metals is related to commerce. If a feud/tribe has a lot of metal, a surplus, it allows for commerce generation with other tribes. But if we are talking about both content and grammatical norms, then E is written properly.

Is this YDS?

The Silk Road helped inventions and cultures to spread as well as (the silk road helped) generating commerce between parts of the world.

Wait, is "helped" applied to both "inventions and cultures" and "generating commerce" in E?

D doesn't work because it creates trade and commerce, that's the same thing, thereby making d repetitive. E is correct.

Strictly speaking, I don't see a reason why it couldn't be - but I think it's due to the fact that >!the two clauses in D are *both* modified by 'between different parts of the world', so it would be better to use 'and' instead of 'as well as', whereas in E, "helped inventions and cultures to spread" is *not* modified by "between different parts of the world".!< That being said, I probably wouldn't bat an eye/lid at either D or E.

If the answer is supposed to be E, shouldn't it be "*generated"*, in order to match "*helped"?* Having two different verb forms in the structure "*verb* as well as *verb*" doesn't seem right here.

I'm a native speaker and there's no problem with D or E. I think it could be both

E is incorrect, disagreement in tenses. Can’t have “helpED” and “generatING” in the same sentence like this. I don’t see a correct answer here.

I don't know why someone would use "generating" in E. A gerund feels very wrong here. Or you could drop "as well as" and replace it with a comma.

C, D, and E all *work*, but E is written the *best*. C works grammatically, but is sticking two independent topics together (two true statements about trade, but they aren't related to each other) so it doesn't flow nicely. D is general and is redundant when followed by the rest of the sentence. E sticks two very related topics together in a way that *how* they are related is obvious.

Only E makes sense. Everything else isn’t a complete sentence.

…… I hate this question. It’s so nit-picky. Even if trade and commerce is redundant that’s still a terrible way to show a wrong sentence. Like the fact that I read that without even batting an eye is to me evidence that this is poorly designed.

This definitely takes me back to the days when I was preparing for the university entrance exam in Turkey. At first, those kinds of questions seemed completely random, but after a while, you start to notice the patterns. Once you've seen enough of them, it becomes almost automatic, you can figure out the answer in about 10 seconds.

Grammatically, I *think* the answer would be E. In terms of fact or discussion, any of these would fit. I really despise these kinds of questions. edit: all the options are really clunky / awkward, but E is the least terrible option

D is the only one that makes sense.

It's because "trade" and "commerce" mean the same thing, so D would be redundant.